16 
PRESERVING CHOICE PLANTS FROM SLUGS. 
The season is now fast approaching when slugs and other crawling depredators 
commence their ravages in our flower gardens, and, unless prevented, may destroy 
all our choicest productions. Many are the remedies which have been prescribed ; 
but none are so generally applicable as could be desired ; although most, under 
certain circumstances, are found to answer. 
Some persons make a few holes about one inch deep round the plants infected, 
the slugs taking shelter in these holes are easily destroyed by dropping a bit of salt 
or quicklime upon them. This method, however, will not answer for valuable 
plants, as the slugs might probably destroy the plants before they sought shelter in 
the holes. 
Others water the ground and plants with the drainings of the dunghill, or cow- 
house, diluted with a little water. Clear lime-water also effectually destroys them. 
It is made by adding two pecks of quicklime to about sixty gallons of water, and 
well stirring them together in a large tub, and pouring off the clear liquor into a 
watering pot, with a rose. If the ground be well saturated with either this or the 
urine, the slugs will disappear ; but the application is fatal to all delicate and tender 
plants. 
Some spread lime upon the ground, or dig it in, neither of which is of much 
avail, unless the operation be performed when the slugs are on the surface. Mr. 
Corbett’s system, as noticed in the “ Horticultural Register,” page 166, is probably 
one of the best, if not one of the very best, remedies of this kind. “ Lightly cover 
the ground over with good quicklime, at ten o’clock at night, and about three or 
four o’clock in the morning, n still fine weather, repeat the operation for a few 
times, and most of, if not all, the slugs, will be destroyed.” This, however, can be 
scarcely considered safe for delicate plants, as an injudicious application will be very 
likely to destroy them. 
Another method is enticing them by baits : if cabbage leaves are warmed before 
the fire until they become quite soft, and are then rubbed with fresh butter or drip- 
ping, and placed on different parts of the ground infested, they prove an excellent 
decoy. Also a turnip, cut into halves and hollowed out, and laid on the ground 
with the hollow part downwards, proves a good place of shelter. Both the leaves 
and turnips should be examined every morning, and the slugs sheltered under 
them killed. 
Another system is to prevent them from coming near the plants. To accom- 
plish this, many means have been used : dry hulls of oats, saw dust, or sifted coal 
ashes from an iron foundry, or smithy, strewed upon the ground where the plants 
are placed, or spread round any particular plant, are impassable barriers, so long as 
they remain dry ; the two latter in particular, because they abound in innumerable 
sharp points, which no slug can pass over, owing to the extreme delicacy of that 
part of their bodies upon which they move. But the efficiency of all these is lost 
after a heavy shower of rain, either from being washed into the soil, or entirely 
away, as is generally the case with the saw dust and hulls of oats. 
